Bounded Accuracy L&L

[billd91]

While I seriously doubt this will be the case, it is sort of my concern as well. I think, on the balance, I really like the idea of bounded accuracy. But the HP inflation can't be astronomical to make up for the flattened accuracy. I know there are people who love games like Final Fantasy, but one of the reasons I'm not one of them is hit points numbering in the thousands. To a large extent, this is also why I don't like a lot of MMOs.

I hear you. It's like watching the huge numbers pop up in Diablo 3 as well. I can't say I'm really fond of the number inflation there either.

 

[Tortoise]

I think this may prove to be the single biggest conceptual Improvement in D&D since its inception. It is odd that something that seems so obvious now has never really been discussed before, but it neatly handles a whole range of issues.

I'm delighted!

Brother you said it. Flattening the math seems to be putting a lot of issues to bed and leaving everyone more time to play. As a DM I look forward to seeing more of how this works during playtesting.

 

[Dausuul]

One difficulty I have, is that I don't think I like worlds where the most powerful BBEGs, such as the Tarrasque or its equivalent, can be defeated by armies. I want only heroes to be able to fight these things. Cuz that's cool.

I agree, but the fix for this is quite simple: Damage reduction. Because damage does scale with level, DR renders a monster immune to attack by low-level foes while leaving it vulnerable to high-level ones.

 

[Estlor]

Mental snicker at the people who argue this idea is bad because, "The PCs never improve."

Here's a dirty little secret: PCs never improved. By the time you got that nice double-digit bonus to attack and defenses, the monsters you ran across got it too. So while you end up throwing 45s on your attacks and sport a 25 AC, those goblins have turned into mindflayers that have an equally higher attack bonus and defenses so your chance to hit is still 45-55% just like it was at level 1.

So all Bounded Accuracy does is remove false improvement and the addition of large numbers from the game.

Also, really, this is the most 4e thing they've shown us so far. Strip away the 4e scaling bonus of 1/2 level for PCs and 1/level for monsters and you're left with ability mods of +3 - +9 to attack and defense and attacks that deal progressively more damage dice.

Slap some tactical terrain modifiers and forced movement onto the system and you've got a streamlined 4e with the classic D&D fluff put back on it. And to think a few months ago people were worried DDN was going to be a 3.x clone with none of the trappings of 4e.

 

[B.T.]

There is a fine line of balance to walk when dealing with hit points as defense and AC as defense. If the AC gets too high, attacks don't matter. If the HP gets too high, attacks don't matter (and it's a pain to deal with combat). With any luck, the developers will get this right.

 

[Mercutio01]

I agree, but the fix for this is quite simple: Damage reduction. Because damage does scale with level, DR renders a monster immune to attack by low-level foes while leaving it vulnerable to high-level ones.

That's an excellent point, and one I'd xp you for if it was turned on.

 

[IronWolf]

There is a fine line of balance to walk when dealing with hit points as defense and AC as defense. If the AC gets too high, attacks don't matter. If the HP gets too high, attacks don't matter (and it's a pain to deal with combat). With any luck, the developers will get this right.

The AC I can get, as when it is sky high, lower level things don't even stand a chance of hitting it or to hit it requires magic and magic gained at an expected level.

But HP? Why don't attacks matter as HP get high? The way I am reading it, the HP goes up for "higher level critters" and the heroes have their attack damage go up as they gain higher level. So their attacks are doing more damage and still bringing the HP total of the creature down in a timely fashion.

What this makes possible is for a band of town citizens to go tackle something otherwise out of their league. They can hit, because the AC isn't all that great. But it has tons of hit points. So individually their attacks are rather pointless. But band together 30 villagers and suddenly the big giant harassing the town has a legitimate concern as even through individually their damage is low, together they can make up for that.

Or am I completely missing the point?

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Great post. It really confirms everything we need to know about their design philosophy for accuracy bonuses, the flat math, etc.

It does leave me with one question I've been wondering though, and I ask this in all honesty: If we assume that 5 goblins are a challenge to a party of 1st-level characters, how many of you DMs are going to have the patience to manage, let's say, 25 goblins fighting a party of 10th-level adventurers?

I am going to give an answer to this, without having read the thread beyond this post.
I would take a leaf from wargaming and 4e. Make the goblins large swarms of goblins . The to hit number is the same as per regular goblins but the hit points and damage output is the total of the goblins in the swarm(unit).
Hit point damage to the swarm takes out a number of goblins = total damage/goblin hp round up.
If the swarm suffers 25% losses it makes a morale check (probalely a medium difficulty check), 50% losses it automatically breaks. Each swarm that breaks forces a morale check on each neighbouring unit (probably an easy check).
This is my first thought on the matter. It could be refined when one has a better knolwdge of the system.

 

[Tortoise]

It sounds great.

Now for some good old fashion Minigiant pessimism.

1) Pokemon play. Everything hits. Everything hurts. Goblins are lvl 2 pidgeys to your druid's level 20 venusaur. No one is ever an insignifacant speck. It's a good thing but it was never part of d&d before.

2) Can't make a mountain of goblin corpses anymore. They can actually hurt me now.

3) With no increases, you intial rolls for stats matter a lot. No more growing your 14 STR halfling into a warrior by getting +10 to hit over 10 level. That +2 stays forever...maybe.

4) 18 str cleric is about equal to a 18 str fighter in hitting. 18 Dex wizard is as sneak as a 18 Dex rogue. Class feature will mean a lot now. And bad ones equals really bad classes.

Have you playtested yet?

Not everything hits/hurts, but the potential to hit/hurt lasts longer for lower level monsters than in previous systems.

You certainly can make a mountain of goblins. My players made a mountain of kobolds and rats Saturday (with some risk involved)

Ability scores aren't as all-powerful as one might expect in this format, while they can be important. Besides, magic (even a measly +1 or +2) will seem quite nice without needing a +5 to feel it is powerful.

Equal strength characters will be close early on, but it appears some separation begins at level 1 and widens slowly over the levels. This makes it easier on the DM to challenge the whole party instead of jacking things out of everyone except the fighter's reach or making the fighter feel like things are too easy.

While I have only seen the first open playtest material and do have reservation about some elements, now that I've had a chance to run it and talk about it post game, I like where things could be headed and want to participate more in the playtesting.

I doubt at present that we have to worry about this becoming Pokemon the RPG.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Under 3E, if the players have chosen to deal with a house cat through no other means than trying to calm it down through a skill they haven't devoted any attention to, they will fail no matter what level they are because Handle Animal is Trained Only. But that's another matter. Let's say it's a skill that isn't Trained only. They will most likely find the task less challenging due to 5 stat increases and a +6 item in the relavant stat by 20th-level.

PENDANT MODE
[sblock]
That's not entirely accurate. Believe it or not, Handle Animal, by RAW, isn't used to interact with wild animals, it's used to train animals. The skill used to interact with wild animals, in 3e, is Diplomacy (and only via the Wild Empathy class ability). Which means that, in broader terms, you're basically right: anyone who doesn't know how to do this will fail when they attempt to do this. And if Wild Empathy was something anyone could do with a Diplomacy check, the DC remains static, so they do find it easier (which leads to a lot of criticism against non-scaling DC's...but that's another issue).
[/sblock]

One difficulty I have, is that I don't think I like worlds where the most powerful BBEGs, such as the Tarrasque or its equivalent, can be defeated by armies. I want only heroes to be able to fight these things. Cuz that's cool.

I like dividing this up based on "tiers," which might be conceived of as big, flat, bonuses. Say, everything in Epic Tier gets a flat +20 bonus to everything. Now, no one below that has a chance, and anyone above that can maybe do stuff to each other.